Flaggers must get smart to keep cars by Maxwell moving

Q: I’m not sure who to address my gripe to. I know that the relocation of Maxwell Road at Albany Shaker Road is a massive undertaking, and I have all the respect in the world for the workers involved in this project.

However, when the traffic is down to one lane in this area, the flagperson allows about 50 cars to pass in one direction before allowing cars headed in the other direction to proceed. Not only does this not make sense to me, it backs up traffic literally for miles, sometimes right through the intersection of Wolf Road and Old Wolf Road, and frustrates drivers who are forced to sit in their idling cars for up to 20 minutes. Can someone give these flagpersons a lesson in directing traffic? They obviously don’t understand the proper procedures.

— Karen Miller, Menands

A: Michael Franchini, director of operations for Albany County, said your concerns caused the county to have a conversation with the contractor but there are reasons flaggers let more cars go in one direction than another.

“It is always a challenge to move traffic through a construction zone and to do this safely, especially on heavily traveled roads,” he said. “Albany County project managers and our construction inspectors on the site keep a very close eye on the flow of traffic during the entire construction period, and construction contractors are required to maintain two lanes of traffic during morning and evening rush hour and whenever possible. However, there are rare times during construction when work must be done to maintain a safe lane, when lanes are moved, or when machinery blocks a traffic lane, and two-way traffic cannot be maintained. We really try to keep these times to a minimum.”

All flaggers in the construction zone must comply with national standards for training, safety vests, equipment, work periods, and communications with other flaggers, he said. “Flaggers on the Maxwell Road Project are dealing with tens of thousands of vehicles each day and several intersections including Wolf Road which is a major entrance to our airport and an entrance to an interstate highway,” he said. “Often flagging is not as simple as it looks.”

Your Getting There columnist is familiar with this situation. Last week, I counted 65 cars allowed to pass as I waited to get to work. (Counting cars counts as work, so I wasn’t really late, right boss?)

Franchini said flaggers can’t always let an equal number of cars pass in each direction.

“They shouldn’t just be even all the time or the cars traveling in the predominant direction are going to back up a lot farther and a lot faster,” he said. “Most flaggers will give some preference to the dominant direction of traffic.”

At the Albany Shaker site of the new Maxwell Road and roundabout, he said, most of the cars in the morning are traveling east. In the evening, they are heading west. If you’re traveling in the opposite direction and traffic must be reduced to a single lane, he said, you’re likely going to wait longer.

Tim O'Brien

18 Responses

Why can’t the person making this complaint find another route (which unfortunately might mean going a little out of her way). This is a perfect example of how someone else knows how to do somebody else’s job better than they can. Has this person ever stood in the middle of the road and directed traffic? She should try counting cars while she is standing in the middle of the road dodging cars.

I live near Deleware Ave. where they are reworking the roadway; with that said I have to complain about their flaggers.

I wanted to take a left (at a light) to head towards 787, and with my windows down I hear a flagger say “Stupid F***, you wont be able to take a left there lol – Then he says to another guy just standing around “Does he not see the traffic”.

I replied sticking my head out of the window, “Hey stupid, its your job to stop traffic in order to let me turn, you know to allow traffic to flow better”. Next thing you know the flagger runs out to block traffic and the guy not doing anything, magically started to work.

Moral of the story don’t think out-loud, I can hear……………. Not to mention DGS will hear about this……

I agree with Pete to a point “find another route”, while this is a good option, in some cases it does not apply depending on the layout of where you live, and how much of your area is under construction. I do not live near the site described in this article; but I can sympathize with some living directly in and around the area.

As for the job hazard I agree, but you cannot lose your cool while doing your job, and blame others because “maybe your having a bad day”. I know its tough, as I have friends who are “Operators” and coming up they were flaggers. Pete, I will not deny the fact that some drivers are the problem, but two wrongs don’t make a right.

What is your hurry and what is the reason for most driver’s hurry. Can’t you take a different route when you know there is construction on your route? I think the driving public should all slow down, Speed kills.

The $ paid to flagpersons should allow them to keep the filth out of their mouths. GROW UP PEOPLE, avoid construction and you will not be inconvenienced. Today people are “Too important to use their heads and avoid work sites.”

I go around = currently Fuller Road is under construction. I just go another way.

I chuckled when I read Pete’s comment. It makes me wonder how people think when they’re driving. When I come up to a busy intersection (any where) with heavy traffic on the cross street, and I want to go to the business on the other side of the intersection and on the right, I will go through the intersection (when the light turns green) and turn right into the business. Other people would stop at the RED signal, turn RIGHT on RED, then wait and wait and wait in the traffic lane on the busy cross street for on-coming traffic (which has a green light 50-100 ft behind at the corner) to stop before they turn LEFT into the business.

Construction work is just a conspiracy with the goverment there not doing it to improve the pot holes or to fix the traffic problems we have. They do it just to see if people are smarter than labratory mice in a maze and apparently with the first comment here there not!! The lab mice are smart enough to know if they can’t go one way they go another! So try going another way! If you can’t figure that out get out a map which mice can’t, but u can so figure it out and go another way if in that area you can not find another way to where your going i feel sorry for you! You are not that smart you deserve to sit in traffic actually im not sure you should be in a motor vehicle!

I was a roadway flagger and often had to make decisions about letting dominate traffic through. Its a stressful job and people are NEVER nice. I had people swearing at me, spitting at me, and deciding they weren’t waiting anymore and going AROUND me and almost injuring people. My job was to try and keep everyone safe. One old lady stopped, then ran INTO me because she didn’t want to wait anymore. You have no idea why we have you stopped and waiting. Often times we had to ensure that emergency vehicles could get through (from the dominate side) so we couldn’t let traffic back up too much on that side. Please be courteous to flaggers, its not exactly rainbows and cupcakes for them either.

I have flagged in construction areas and can attest that it is as easy as it looks. The flaggers at Shaker and Maxwell are awful. To allow traffic to be backed up to Old Wolf Rd in one direction or almost to Osborne Road in the other direction shows a lack of ability to control the flow of traffic. I haven’t even seen these particular flaggers using walkie-talkies to maintain communication as to how backed up one side has gotten. There is never a reason to force one side to sit more than 5 minutes while the other side is allowed to pass. 65 cars at one time is far too many especially when cars are only moving 5-10 mph through the area under construction. They need better training or at least some common sense. It really isn’t that difficult in my own experience.

I live abiout a mile east of the Latham traffic circle and and must travel through the Exit 6 construction if I want to head west. I know the frustration of traffic backups well. However I also know the relief a round-about can bring to congested roads. We travel weekly to exit twelve and experience and appreciate the free flow of trafic through the round-about system on route 67. The results of the current construction will be forgotten while traveling through the new traffic system. Live with it for a while. It’s worth the bother.

Saratoga County has it’s issues as well — Friday afternoon I actually watched a flagger HIT the car in front of me with his flags while screaming at at the driver who apparently wasn’t moving fast enough through the intersection — guess the flagger wasn’t very concerned with the safety of his co-workers.

I agree with the Deleware Ave flaggers or lack there-of. Every day is a struggle getting my son to school, and myself to work. I leave an additional 10 minutes early and have to stay it is still not enought time. They have streets blocked off with no notice and the flaggers are not paying attention to traffic patterns. The job of a flagger is to make sure traffic is flowing, smothly. This is not the case for Deleware construction.

I really love the sort of two-ounce yippy-dog types, who go and post their venom without ever considering the possibility that the complainent actually went and found a better route, AFTER finding out of the situation which ruined her day. Or maybe she tried, but found that the theory of alternate, and “better” routes is in truth just the song of the shut-up-n-quit-yer-complain’n, only-I-have-the-right-to-do-that crowd. This is exactly what it is, nothing more than a psychologically-manipulative song. While it’s unsurprising that it ever worked before, it just boggles the mind if it still works well enough on those experienced with Albany’s traffic problems that it can still be used by the officials who are responsible to bounce the stink of the problem back to the drivers.

Every time that I go and try a different route, the same thing happens – I still lose as much time or more as I would have by staying the course, and how this happens is hardly rocket science. To begin with, all alternate routes are less ideal than your usual route to begin with – specifically, they would always cover more mileage, or be expected to require more travel time under ideal traffic conditions. Then that alternate is flooded with taffic by those exiting the most-traveled route, or piling on it in lieu of that route, hoping to avoid getting stuck when there is an accident, or road work, causing the traffic on that longer route to come to a standstill as well. Another problem may limit alternate route options, depending on where the driver is traveling from. North of SR 87 Exit 2 is chronic traffic- jam hell, due to no fault of anyone who must drive under such conditions, but owing all to extreme negligence in the development of Clifton Park’s traffic management system as the population there mushroomed. Don’t blame the drivers, and don’t blame the poor folks who have to do the work – blame the officials who are responsible for letting the situation devolve into it’s present condition!

Yo, all who agree with Pete – specifically, those agreeing that it “ain’t always as easy as it looks”! It’s not worth starting an argument on the difficulty or lack thereof involved in waving a flag while counting vehicles as they pass (whatever their thought processes may me on deciding when to open it up to those from the other direction). Not that I’m insensitive to the fact that they must do so under frequently harsh, and quite dangerous conditions, but the complainent was told by Pete to go find an alternate route – as if that would have saved her any time! It’s not necessarily even an option when you learn of the problem by getting stuck in it, with a 20-minute wait until the next exit, or real opportunity for a detour route. It’s a day ruined, no matter how she may choose to deal with any such ongoing situation the next time, and her complaint deserves more respect than Pete’s attitude.

Suppose she was one of the people with enough time on her hands at work, and little else on her mind that she had prior awareness of every accident situation and construction project on her regular route, and she planned accordingly. She would have found out as I did that the “alternate route” theory is just a political taunt which lets those who are responsible for the incompetently-engineered, and wastefully-developed roadways of the Capital Region to dodge the stink of the problem by blowing it back on those who complain of it. Why this is true requires little thought to understand. An alternate route is not your regular route because it is less efficient for being slower, longer, or both during the best of conditions, and if you choose to take it during a backup you will see only the worst of conditions. Traffic will quickly slow to a crawl, just as it did on the route where the accident occurred, or where work is taking place, because you aren’t the only one who had that bright idea to take the low road. Every time that I’ve tried this, I lost as much time as or more than I would have by staying the course. Don’t blame the drivers, and don’t blame the poor workers, but don’t ever let those who are responsible for traffic system investment, project management, or signal systems off the hook! Don’t protect those responsible for the state which has had for at least a decade the highest percentage of work zone, but still the worst road conditions, by attacking those who complain about it.